Israeli chef wins James Beard Award, 'Oscars of the culinary world'
Chef Ashley Christensen's comfort food at Poole's Diner in North Carolina and the modern Israeli cuisine at Zahav in Philadelphia took top honors Monday night at the James Beard Awards, which many consider to be the Oscars of the culinary world.
Zahav's nod for outstanding restaurant comes two years after Zahav co-owner and Chef Michael Solomonov, who is from Israel but was raised in Pittsburgh, took home the outstanding chef award. Zahav's current menu features hummus with a daily chef's selected topping, duck and foie gras kebab and a concord grape sorbet with poached quince and peanut baklava.
This year's outstanding chef is Christensen, who's been nominated in the category before but has never won. Christensen opened Poole's Diner in Raleigh in 2007 and her biography on the restaurant's website describes it as an "evolving chalkboard menu of comfort-food classics, re-imagined through a philosophy of locally grown, seasonal ingredients and French-influenced technique."
